The lone conservative on the Anchorage School Board has started his reelection campaign. Dave Donley will welcome supporters at Gwennie’s Old Alaska Restaurant in Spenard on Wednesday, Dec. 15 from 5:30 to 7 pm.
Donley has fought against mask mandates and Critical Race Theory, and in favor of students learning the Pledge of Allegiance. He has advocated for a budget that is right-sized for the shrinking number of students the district has.
Donley is a former state senator and representative.
The Anchorage Assembly voted unanimously on Tuesday to end the mask mandate emergency ordinance in Anchorage at midnight.
Assemblywoman Meg Zaletel declared victory, saying the mandate did “what it was intended and set our city on a better path” for the health of the community.
The mask ordinance, which was controversial, was voted into law in October and would have expired next week, unless extended by another emergency ordinance.
Several members of the public showed up to the Assembly meeting in Guy Fawkes masks, in apparent protest of the mask mandate.
Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson today named Michael Kerle as Anchorage’s next Chief of Police.
“Deputy Chief Kerle’s qualifications, career experience, and dedication to APD speaks for itself” said Mayor Bronson. “I appreciate his willingness to continue serving the Municipality of Anchorage as the next police chief. Deputy Chief Kerle is dedicated to protecting all communities in Anchorage. Public safety for our residents in the Muni is our number one priority as we seek to make Anchorage the safest city in America to work, live, and play.”
Kerle has served with the Anchorage Police Department for 25 years and is currently serving as the deputy chief. Kerle began his law enforcement career in 1996 when he joined APD as a recruit in the Academy. He was promoted to deputy chief in February, 2020.
Kerle was born and raised in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. He traveled the world with the United States Army as a commissioned officer before settling in Alaska in 1995 to be closer to his wife’s family.
Over the course of his 25 year career at APD, he has held positions in the patrol division, special operations, and crime suppression.
He has a bachelor of science degree from the University of New York, is a graduate of the Police Executive Leadership Graduate Program and the Administrative Officer’s Course from the Southern Institute at the University of Louisville, the FBI Hazardous Devices Executive Management School, and the SWAT Commanders’ School.
Kerle takes over for current Police Chief Kenneth McCoy, who is retiring in February to accept a position outside the municipal government.
By MICHAEL TAVOLIERO
Our Alaska congressional delegation — Sens. Lisa Murkowski, Dan Sullivan, and Congressman Don Young — are DC sell-outs and should be retired with the upcoming elections in 2022 for Murkowski and Young, and the 2026 for Sullivan.
Think about it: We have a congressional delegation which continues to treat our state as a colony and our country as a collective influenced and controlled by Washington, DC.
Alaska’s evolution from territory to statehood was a result of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’ New Deal Democrats and post WWII national security preparation. Roosevelt’s presidency was one of the largest centralizations of power and control by the federal government. This was exactly what the US Constitution authors and our Founders warned us not to do.
Most of Alaska’s constitutional convention delegates were devoted followers of the FDR administration, in other words, they were prepubescent Marxists.
Granting statehood to Alaska involved getting it past the federal concerns of financial solvency. Without economic development through natural resource management, the hopes of private sector financial solvency were slim. Since statehood, the federal government has done everything it could do to shut down our economy.
Historically, Alaska’s success was a litmus test that produced more government as opposed to private enterprise. A utopian cornucopia promised by our constitutional convention resulted in statehood.
Robert B. Atwood, chairman of the Alaska Statehood Committee, addressing the constitutional convention in 1955 stated, “This document [Alaska’s proposed state constitution], once it is backed with ratification of the people, must be real and indisputable proof that Alaskans are ready, able and willing to undertake all the responsibilities of self-government.”
He continued, “Alaskans want all of the successes and all of the basic principles that have made this nation great, written into their constitution, perpetuated there and enlarged and expanded, and we all know they want none of the failures that have led to clumsy, inefficient, costly and complicated government. They don’t want duplications and unwise restrictions and all the other abhorrent developments that come from an inflexible constitution.”
Ironically, at statehood to now, our dependence upon the federal government grows as Alaska’s constitutional policy inflexibly failed to recognize basic American fundamentals.
Our state constitution and subsequent legislation and regulations require Alaskans to forget about such foundational principles as limited government, private property mineral and subsurface rights, and the capitalist economic system, and instituted a massive bureaucracy with immense regulatory control. With the requirement of the mini-Blaine amendment in our constitution as a prerequisite to enter the union, Alaska’s progeny now suffer one of the poorest performance outcomes and one of the highest costs in education of any state in the nation.
Think about it: In Alaska, is anyone not employed directly or indirectly by government?
Did you know that if you add all government employment (federal, state, local, contractors), Alaska has more government employees than any other state and any other nation per capita?
Alaska was one of the favorite petri dishes for the American Marxist’s hopes for utopia. It has surreptitiously been guised as a red state yet its own fiscal policies and its relationship to the federal government demonstrate the actions of a blue state.
The result in 1959 gave Alaskans the largest land mass state with the smallest population and greatest natural resource development potential in the union.
What an incredible opportunity!
Sadly, it entered the union of the greatest country in the world and in history with the legislative and regulatory baggage triggering one of the nation’s worse and most expensive state bureaucracies.
In 1959, Alaska, now possessing the sovereignty of a state, began the process of self-determination chained by Marxist ideology founded upon the ramifications of the Mini-Blaine Amendment, state controlled mineral and subsurface property rights, the Antiquities Act of 1906, the Jones act of 1916, absence of federal land conveyances, and the 16th and 17th amendments of the US Constitution and the list goes on.
The federal government’s regulatory power can object to any uses of state land. We have areas of Alaska specifically selected by the state as allowed in our Statehood Agreement, that have huge nationally strategic mineral resources that we can’t develop because of the federal government.
How many Alaskans know that we have yet to receive all the lands promised in our statehood act almost 63 years ago.
Isn’t it time to make this so?
Is Alaska really a sovereign state?
In June of 2019, Professor James Broughel of Mercatus Center, George Washington University, published “A Snapshot of Alaska Regulation in 2019.” What he revealed was Alaska’s administrative code had 52,570 restrictions, 5.8 million words, and would take 8 weeks to read. He stated, “Individuals and businesses in Alaska must navigate these different layers of restrictions to remain in compliance.”
Add to this, municipal or borough regulations are often more restrictive than those of the state. No matter how you frame it compliance with these restrictions cost our citizenry time, energy, and capital.
The hope of freedom under Article I of the Alaska State constitution was never realized by the spawning of Alaska Marxists who contravened that hope with empty promises and clandestine actions.
On March 11, 2020, Covid 19 took control of the Alaska’s state and local government apparatuses creating the greatest economic and social debacle in the state’s history. Almost everything about this pandemic, the government got wrong, yet regardless of our government’s failure its citizenry continues to suffer the monolithic tragedy of oppression and deprivation promulgated by government.
We can argue California, New York or other Democrat strongholds are more tyrannical, but look at Alaska. The greatest natural resource potential of any state in the nation and perhaps the world with locks, chains, and chastity belts on anything remotely productive.
Which leads me to the reality of our congressional delegation.
During the candidacy of Donald J. Trump and the first 2 years of his presidential administration, Congress was controlled by Republicans, an unbelievable possibility for conservative “hope and change.”
In response, the Alaska congressional delegation, Murkowski, Sullivan and Young, together with other Republican Marxists, did everything they could to cancel him.
The greatest opportunity for reform and the implementation of Trump’s contract with the American voter, his 100-day action plan to Make America Great Again, was directly sabotaged by Alaska’s congressional trio with every opportunity.
The only president ever to address the possibilities of Alaska’s nature resource development was stabbed in the back multiple times by Alaska’s own Republican congressional delegation.
Now, with President Biden, Murkowski, Sullivan and Young openly and shamelessly supported the Biden infrastructure package. If that isn’t proof positive that this trio is out of touch with Alaska, all three of them supported anti-fossil fuel, radical environmentalist Deb Haaland to be Interior Secretary. She subsequently suspended the Trump administration development of ANWAR.
That is a bookend litany of their deplorable actions, not their empty words. They sold out our state, our country, our voters and, most importantly, they sold out the future of our children.
This is such a sad tribute to the greatest natural resource development state in the nation. Increased federal dollars. Increased federal control. Decrease in our control of our state.
Senator Sullivan, Senator Murkowski, and Congressman Young, you have all lost your way.
It is time to retire.
Michael Tavoliero is a realtor in Eagle River, is active in the Alaska Republican Party and until recently chaired Eaglexit.
Cliff Groh, longtime political commentator, has filed a letter of intent with the Alaska Public Offices Commission to run for what is the new House District 23. It stretches from Government Hill, where he lives, wraps around JBER and encompasses part of Mountainview and a portion of Eagle River.
Groh is a big-government Democrat and proponent of taxing Alaskans’ incomes. On Twitter, he recently said, “Alaska needs more revenues. Some should come from a broad-based tax aimed particularly at high earners, including non-residents. This would help keep us out of a downward spiral…”
The area of town he lives in used to be in District 20, a liberal district that is now represented by Rep. Zack Fields. Groh ran for that district in 2018, but lost to Fields in the primary. His new district stretches north into conservative areas, rather than south into the heart of downtown Anchorage and the South Addition.
Groh worked as a legislative aide in the Alaska Legislature and worked for the Alaska Department of Revenue. He was a municipal attorney, a petroleum taxation attorney, a prosecutor, and a criminal defense attorney, according to his extensive bio. He writes frequent opinions that appear in the Anchorage Daily News on the topic of Alaska’s fiscal crisis and he is on the board of the progressive group “Alaska Common Ground.”
All House and Senate seats (except one) are up for election this year due to the redistricting process that redrew political boundaries in order to assign an even number of residents to each political district. The Redistricting Board shifted boundaries in Anchorage as a result, as Anchorage has been losing population, while the Mat-Su Valley has grown significantly.
The district now known as 23 is also the home of Rep. David Nelson (who represented District 15 under the old map.) Nelson is running for reelection.
House District 23 – Senate District L – Government Hill/JBER/Northeast Anchorage
The Anchorage Daily News calls the resignation of Anchorage Police Chief Ken McCoy “abrupt,” even though the chief announced he will be staying on the force until February. The chief has worked for over 27 years for the Anchorage Police Department.
In its second story about McCoy’s resignation, the newspaper recounted how unhappy the Alaska Black Caucus is now that McCoy is leaving and insinuated that it was due to the Bronson Administration, saying that members of the black community have “many unanswered questions.”
The definition of race-bating is “the unfair use of statements about race to try to influence the actions or attitudes of a particular group of people,” according to Merriam-Webter Dictionary.
“As Anchorage’s first Black police chief, McCoy’s appointment was a moment to celebrate, they said, and his decision to retire left them surprised and saddened,” the newspaper reported on Dec. 7, six days after its initial report that the chief was retiring.
Those close to the chief say he was offered a job that will pay him vastly more than the department currently does.
But the followup story goes on to insinuate that something more is at stake, and works the narrative overtime to make the case.
“The mayor did not address McCoy’s retirement until the morning after the announcement,” the writers note, and then continue for several paragraphs to build a case for things being not quite right about McCoy’s departure, and how unhappy the black community is about it.
McCoy was appointed acting police chief by acting mayor Austin Quinn-Davidson, after the resignation of Chief Justin Doll in April.
“McCoy’s retirement was a shock to many, said Rev. Undra Parker of Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church. Parker helped rally support for him alongside the Alaska Black Caucus. McCoy announced his retirement late Tuesday evening through Nixle, the police department’s opt-in notification system. Before that, it was not addressed internally in the department, said Jeremy Conkling, president of the police union,” the ADN reported.
“McCoy is well-respected and widely liked because he worked to connect with all of Anchorage’s communities, Parker said,” the story continued.
And then it rehashed the history of McCoy, something it did not do when former Chief Justin Doll announced his retirement in February.
“While campaigning, Bronson said he would not automatically appoint McCoy to the position, but would consider all options. Scores of community members, especially people of color, threw their support behind McCoy, Parker said.”
The Alaska Black Caucus was revitalized in 2020 after having been dormant for decades. The Anchorage Assembly majority quickly awarded the group over $1.6 million in CARES Act money to perform Covid vaccine outreach, and to buy a building to house its organization. The group is a surrogate for the Alaska Democratic Party.
NASA has chosen 10 new astronaut candidates from a field of more than 12,000 applicants to represent the United States. One of them is Deniz Burnham of Wasilla.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson introduced the members of the 2021 astronaut class, the first new class in four years, during a Monday, Dec. 6 event at Ellington Field near NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“Today we welcome 10 new explorers, 10 members of the Artemis generation, NASA’s 2021 astronaut candidate class,” Nelson said. “Alone, each candidate has ‘the right stuff,’ but together they represent the creed of our country: E pluribus unum – out of many, one.”
The astronaut candidates will report for duty at Johnson in January 2022 to begin two years of training. Astronaut candidate training falls into five major categories: operating and maintaining the International Space Station‘s complex systems, training for spacewalks, developing complex robotics skills, safely operating a T-38 training jet, and Russian language skills.
Upon completion, they could be assigned to missions that involve performing research aboard the space station, launching from American soil on spacecraft built by commercial companies, as well as deep space missions to destinations including the Moon on NASA’s Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket.
Applicants included U.S. citizens from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and Northern Mariana Islands. For the first time ever, NASA required candidates to hold a master’s degree in a STEM field and used an online assessment tool. The women and men selected for the new astronaut class represent the diversity of America and the career paths that can lead to a place in America’s astronaut corps.
The 2021 astronaut candidates are:
Deniz Burnham, 36, lieutenant, U.S. Navy, calls Wasilla, Alaska, home. A former intern at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, Burnham serves in the U.S. Navy Reserves. She earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of California, San Diego, and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Burnham is an experienced leader in the energy industry, managing onsite drilling projects throughout North America, including in Alaska, Canada, and Texas.
Nichole Ayers, 32, major, U.S. Air Force, is a native of Colorado who graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics with a minor in Russian. She later earned a master’s degree in computational and applied mathematics from Rice University. Ayers is an experienced combat aviator with more than 200 combat hours and more than 1,150 hours of total flight time in the T-38 and the F-22 Raptor fighter jet. One of the few women currently flying the F-22, in 2019 Ayers led the first ever all-woman formation of the aircraft in combat.
Marcos Berríos, 37, major, U.S. Air Force, grew up in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. While a reservist in the Air National Guard, Berríos worked as an aerospace engineer for the U.S. Army Aviation Development Directorate at Moffett Federal Airfield in California. He is a test pilot who holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering as well as a doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University. A distinguished pilot, Berríos has accumulated more than 110 combat missions and 1,300 hours of flight time in more than 21 different aircraft.
Christina Birch, 35, grew up in Gilbert, Arizona, and graduated from the University of Arizona with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biophysics. After earning a doctorate in biological engineering from MIT, she taught bioengineering at the University of California, Riverside, and scientific writing and communication at the California Institute of Technology. She became a decorated track cyclist on the U.S. National Team.
Luke Delaney, 42, major, retired, U.S. Marine Corps, grew up in Debary, Florida. He holds a degree in mechanical engineering from University of North Florida and a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School. He is a distinguished naval aviator who participated in exercises throughout the Asia Pacific region and conducted combat missions in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. As a test pilot, he executed numerous flights evaluating weapon systems integration, and he served as a test pilot instructor. Delaney most recently worked as a research pilot at NASA’s Langley Research Center, in Hampton, Virginia, where he supported airborne science missions. Including his NASA career, Delaney logged more than 3,700 flight hours on 48 models of jet, propeller, and rotary wing aircraft.
Andre Douglas, 35, is a Virginia native. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan, a master’s degree in naval architecture and marine engineering from the University of Michigan, a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from Johns Hopkins University, and a doctorate in systems engineering from the George Washington University. Douglas served in the U.S. Coast Guard as a naval architect, salvage engineer, damage control assistant, and officer of the deck. He most recently was a senior staff member at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, working on maritime robotics, planetary defense, and space exploration missions for NASA.
Jack Hathaway, 39, commander, U.S. Navy, is a native of Connecticut. He earned bachelors’ degrees in physics and history from the U.S. Naval Academy and completed graduate studies at Cranfield University in England and the U.S. Naval War College. A distinguished naval aviator, Hathaway flew and deployed with Navy’s Strike Fighter Squadron 14 aboard the USS Nimitz and Strike Fighter Squadron 136 aboard the USS Truman. He graduated from Empire Test Pilots’ School, supported the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, and was most recently assigned as the prospective executive officer for Strike Fighter Squadron 81. He has more than 2,500 flight hours in 30 types of aircraft, more than 500 carrier arrested landings, and flew 39 combat missions.
Anil Menon, 45, lieutenant colonel, U.S. Air Force, was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was SpaceX’s first flight surgeon, helping to launch the company’s first humans to space during NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission and building a medical organization to support the human system during future missions. Prior to that, he served NASA as the crew flight surgeon for various expeditions taking astronauts to the International Space Station. Menon is an actively practicing emergency medicine physician with fellowship training in wilderness and aerospace medicine. As a physician, he was a first responder during the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, 2015 earthquake in Nepal, and the 2011 Reno Air Show accident. In the Air Force, Menon supported the 45th Space Wing as a flight surgeon and the 173rd Fighter Wing, where he logged over 100 sorties in the F-15 fighter jet and transported over 100 patients as part of the critical care air transport team.
Christopher Williams, 38, grew up in Potomac, Maryland. He graduated from Stanford University in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in physics and a doctorate in physics from MIT in 2012, where his research was in astrophysics. Williams is a board-certified medical physicist, completing his residency training at Harvard Medical School before joining the faculty as a clinical physicist and researcher. He most recently worked as a medical physicist in the Radiation Oncology Department at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. He was the lead physicist for the Institute’s MRI-guided adaptive radiation therapy program. His research focused on developing image guidance techniques for cancer treatments.
Jessica Wittner, 38, lieutenant commander, U.S. Navy, is a native of California with a distinguished career serving on active duty as a naval aviator and test pilot. She holds a Bachelor of Science in aerospace engineering from the University of Arizona, and a Master of Science in aerospace engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. Wittner was commissioned as a naval officer through an enlisted-to-officer program and has served operationally flying F/A-18 fighter jets with Strike Fighter Squadron 34 in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Strike Fighter Squadron 151 in Lemoore, California. A graduate of U.S. Naval Test Pilot School, she also worked as a test pilot and project officer with Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 31 in China Lake, California.
With the addition of these 10 members of the 2021 astronaut candidate class, NASA now has selected 360 astronauts since the original Mercury Seven in 1959.
“We’ve made many giant leaps throughout the last 60 years, fulfilling President Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the moon,” said Johnson center Director Vanessa Wyche. “Today we reach further into the stars as we push forward to the Moon once again and on to Mars with NASA’s newest astronaut candidate class.”
The Haines School District in Haines is still mandating masks universally for students, staff, and visitors in the schools. This, in spite of the fact that there have only been 16 documented cases of Covid-19 in the small Southeast community.
The district also has other robust protocols, such as what some see as extreme testing of athletes, and quarantine rules in a community that has a had no confirmed cases in the past 14 days.
Haines is a community that is tightly knit and children play at each other’s homes routinely — without masks. But once they get to school, the masking rules apply, as they have since August.
The school’s travel mandate guidelines for students and staff are also draconian. After they have traveled, the school guidelines require unvaccinated students and staff to receive two negative Covid test before returning to school, and those who are unvaccinated or who refuse to test must stay home symptom free for at 10 days.:
“All staff and students who travel out of Alaska or in state to an identified high-alert area need to have a negative COVID test result from a test done within 72 hours prior to returning or upon arrival in Alaska; AND
OR
“These definitely are not State of Alaska guidelines and are extremely discriminatory since both vaccinated and unvaccinated indicate proven to catch and spread the virus,” one parent noted to Must Read Alaska.
Many Haines parents have protested the mandates, writing letters, sending in petitions, and demanding parental choice, as they have in Anchorage — to no avail. The majority of the Haines school board members and Superintendent Roy Getchell have been unbending on the mask mandate for children.
Haines is a town of 1,863 residents and the school district has about 275 students. While the community government trends liberal, the population is somewhat more conservative. In the 2020 election, 40% of Haines Borough voters voted for Biden and 55% voted for Trump; 3% voted for Jesse Ventura, who was the Alaska Green Party’s choice for president.
The school board meets at 7 pm Dec. 7; the mask mandates are on the agenda. Links to the Zoom telephonic meeting are at this link.
The Haines School District Covid-19 “Operational Guidelines” are at this link.
Trump Media & Technology Group today announced that Congressman Devin G. Nunes will join the company as Chief Executive Officer.
Nunes is currently a sitting U.S. House Representative, representing California’s 22nd Congressional District, and is the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Nunes will be leaving the U.S. House of Representatives and will begin his new role as Chief Executive Officer of TMTG in January.
Former President Donald J. Trump, Chairman of TMTG, said in a statement, “Congressman Devin Nunes is a fighter and a leader. He will make an excellent CEO of TMTG. Devin understands that we must stop the liberal media and Big Tech from destroying the freedoms that make America great. America is ready for TRUTH Social and the end to censorship and political discrimination.”
“The time has come to reopen the Internet and allow for the free flow of ideas and expression without censorship. The United States of America made the dream of the Internet a reality and it will be an American company that restores the dream. I’m humbled and honored President Trump has asked me to lead the mission and the world class team that will deliver on this promise,” Nunes said.
Nunes, a former dairy farmer, is a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient.
Trump Media & Technology Group Corp.
Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) is a social media and technology company. TruthSocial, TMTG’s upcoming social media platform, will provide an outlet that encourages open global conversation without discrimination against political ideology. TMTG+, the company’s subscription-based video streaming service, is expected to include access to non-woke entertainment, news, documentaries, podcasts and more. To learn more, visit www.tmtgcorp.com.
